Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Another Shoe?

Tucker Carlson said on Matthews’ weekly show tonight that the White House is worried about Bob Woodward’s new book, Plan of Attack which chronicles the lead up to the Iraq War. Carlson said they were worried about Powell using this book to distance himself from the neocon crazies.

Now, this is Tucker talking and this is Woodward and Powell we are talking about, so there’s no point in expecting anything earthshattering. However, it will not help them if this book has Powell arguing with Rummy, Wolfie and Cheney on Iraq or shows Condi clueless or has the president being led around by the nose on the WMD threat. (Powell wasn’t exactly toeing the Party line with enthusiasm yesterday.)

I doubt Woodward is going to be the same drooling sycophant he was with Bush At War because he took a lot of shit for it and risked ruining his journalistic reputation forever. Besides,Woodward’s always been a trendie. When it was in to worship Bush, he was there to lead the prayer but he may find it more profitable to be skeptical this time. He must have known that Clarke and O’Neill were writing books, too. It would be embarrassing to be too gushing this time.

Whether it breaks any new ground or not, I don’t think it can possibly be good for them to have people discussing this in May. The book is due out on April 30th.

The Violent Dems

Ezra comments on Insty’s post about the shocking political hate speech emanating from the left and the horrible, horrible violence and impending totalitarianism running rampant in the Democratic party. Excuse me, I have to loosen my corset. I can hardly breathe I’m so upset about it.

Insty says:

Something I never wanted to believe seems to be playing out daily: the Democratic party has been overrun by totalitarians. The party is marginalizing old-guard Dems who might (might!) hold differing opinions but who also could be counted on for civility and a rational basis for their arguments. . . .There is no room for dissent, discourse, debate. My experience is that people behave this way when they hold indefensible beliefs, and they know just how weak their position is. A dog with this behavior is called a “fear-biter” and I can think of no better description for these people.

Somebody bring me a shot of laudenum and a mint julep. I’m feeling one of my fevahs comin’ on!

Ezra intelligently rebuts Insty’s hysteria in his inimitable fashion:

There are debates going on here everday. This whole exchange is taking place in a medium that consists almost entirely of debates between the Left and the Right! The context of this is a presidential election in which the Democrat is running slightly ahead of Bush and has been proving day in and day out that our ideas are more than defensible, they are quite suited to offense as well. And through all this, the Right has remained dependent on character attacks rather than the invocation of a less-than-stellar record.

[…]

The idea that our arguments and ideas are indefensible is patently ridiculous. Yet Glenn repeats it anyway, highlighting an argument accusing Democrats of being totalitarians unable to rationally support their arguments. And somewhere the truth sits, crying in the corner, wondering why Glenn insists upon abusing it so.

Just so. But, aren’t Republicans (and their useful idiot libertarian supporters) getting more and more, you know, weak these days? As in flabby, flaccid, whiny, ineffectual, weepy and emasculated? They can’t seem to handle any kind of adversity without resorting to shrieks of maidenly finger pointing saying “you sirrah, are no gentleman!” They strut around, their codpieces stuffed with sock-puppets, name calling, hurling insults, verbally assaulting anybody who disagrees with them and when somebody gets fed up and turns it back on them they quiver like a herd of frightened deer and claim that their adversaries are mean and greedy and just plain icky.

Now, I expect pacifists like nuns and priests and vegans to decry physical violence under all circumstances. Indeed, I myself think that violence at political events is never a good thing and I don’t condone it. But, I probably wouldn’t expect to avoid it if I baited and insulted a bunch of great big thugs who hold a different political point of view. That’s just the way the world works. I thought the Republican-kill-the-bastards-quick-hand-me-your-AK47 freepers knew all that, but apparently not.

Our self-proclaimed steely eyed tough guys may spend a lot of time playing one handed Mortal Kombat Deadly Alliance but they don’t seem to have much real life follow through. They certainly don’t follow a stupid macho edict like “never complain, never explain” these days, what with all their weeping and wailing. Why, there used to be a time when they would have been embarrassed to admit to something like this …

Can we really trust American security to these little t-ball players playing dress up in Daddy’s uniform? I don’t think so. They aren’t tough and they aren’t smart. Big problem.

If you’d like to see the way in which this poor ‘lil fella sees the people who took a shot at him, check his picture page which features the description of people at the rally as mindless thugs, dykes, pillow biters and bench rats. I don’t know if he called one of those teamster fellas one of those names to his face, but if he did it may fall into the category of fighting words.

Scumsucking Pig

Avedon Carol led me to this comment on Electrolite about Richard Clarke’s apology:

Anybody who has been paying attention to these hearings will know that all of the witnesses have started their testimony with a lengthy statement explaining this or that about their role in the lead up to 9/ll, much of it self-justifying, much of it saying, well, you know, we were busy with other stuff. So on and so forth.

Mr. Clarke did otherwise. His statement was brief and to the point.

He made a heart-felt apology to the American people for failing to stop 9/ll. He said he did his best. He said a lot of people did their best. But in the end, it didn’t matter because they had failed the American people, most especially the victims, and the families of the victims who died on 9/11.

The members victim’s families who were in the room broke into applause.

I stared at the screen shocked.

And then I, yep, I will admit it here: I started crying.

Well, that’s nice and all, but I think Senator Frist has something to say about that:

In his appearance before the 9-11 Commission, Mr. Clarke’s theatrical apology on behalf of the nation was not his right, his privilege or his responsibility. In my view it was not an act of humility, but an act of supreme arrogance and manipulation. Mr Clarke can and will answer for his own conduct but that is all.

And to all of the 9/11 families, Dr. Frist added, “Fuck you.”

This is one of those moments where I want to put my foot through the TV. The chutzpah, the nerve, the unalloyed balls of these cowardly little fucks makes me very, very angry. I need to take a little walk.

Boiling It Down To One Simple Image

Via TAPPED

Richard Clarke: “…we were readying for a principals’ meeting in July, but the principals’ calendar was full, and then they went on vacation, many of them, in August, so we couldn’t meet in August, and therefore the principals met in September.”

According to a CBS piece on presidential vacations:

Prior to Sept. 11, 2001, The Manchester Guardian calculated that Mr. Bush, in his first seven months of office spent 42 percent of his time on holiday, “a whopping 54 days at his Texas ranch, 38 days at the presidential retreat at Camp David and four more at his parents’ place in Kennebunkport, Maine.”

Hardworking Americans understand why this might have been a problem. The guy was a lazy bastard from the get-go.

Official Minutes Of The MSNBC Junior Varsity Girls Cheerleading Try-outs

Oh my Gawd, like Democrats are like such total geeks, dude. It’s like totally funny to watch them all get together and like act like they’re sooo kewl — NOT! I’m soo shurr. We are sooo much kewler. And cuter, too.

MATTHEWS: … There are the presidents all walking out on the stage, Jimmy Carter, behind him, Bill Clinton. Boy, it‘s an unusual picture here. I guess it is not exactly Mount Rushmore, but it‘s all the Democrats have this time.

Here they come. There‘s John Kerry looking great, dark hair. I love it when they point at people.

We‘re sitting here with Howard Fineman and Karen Tumulty of TIME magazine. Howard is of course with Newsweek and with us.

You know, it‘s amazing. What is this where they all do this? They walk out. Karen, they do this all the time. They go and they go like this. And golike, what is that about? They see like they see some old buddy in the audience? What is that?

HOWARD FINEMAN, NBC CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: It is a way to establish intimacy. Hey, I see you. We‘ve known each other forever. You‘re not just here as a contributor. You did not just give $1,000 to get here. We grew up together. We went to school together.

(LAUGHTER)

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: I‘m stunned by the three the three pictured.

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: Jimmy Carter can‘t stand Bill Clinton. They‘re doing a little oh, talk about disliking each other.

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: Anybody Karen, you‘ve got a moment here. Does anybody on that stage like anybody else?

(LAUGHTER)

KAREN TUMULTY, NATIONAL POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT, TIME: That‘s a very good question.

MATTHEWS: Like anyone else? Try to do a permutation here. Howard, you‘re good at this.

FINEMAN: Yes.

MATTHEWS: Permutations. Oh, Terry McAuliffe. Well, he likes Bill Clinton. Those two like each other. Any president like any other president or vice president?

(CROSSTALK)

FINEMAN: Clinton and Carter don‘t particularly like each other.

MATTHEWS: Howard Dean and John Kerry are not too close.

FINEMAN: Yes.

TUMULTY: I wonder how things are between Gore and Dean these days.

FINEMAN: Now Gore now, Al Gore was not originally supposed to be in the original shot.

MATTHEWS: Right.

FINEMAN: But he managed to do a pretty good job of getting in there as the almost president.

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: Almost.

(LAUGHTER)

FINEMAN: As the guy who got more…

MATTHEWS: There‘s Dick Gephardt.

FINEMAN: … popular votes. So he was pretty instantly in the instant Mount Rushmore up there. This is a symbol…

MATTHEWS: Is that Al Sharpton there? Yes, it is Al Sharpton.

FINEMAN: There you go.

(CROSSTALK)

TUMULTY: I don‘t know. They all look like flight attendants for the same airline.

(CROSSTALK)

FINEMAN: Now, there is Bill Clinton with John Edwards, which is significant only because Edwards keeps claiming that Clinton is his big supporter in the vice presidential hunt.

MATTHEWS: Is that Charlie Rangel? Who is the guy on the left? I just thought it was an odd picture.

TUMULTY: That was Sharpton, wasn‘t it?

MATTHEWS: Was that Sharpton?

(CROSSTALK)

FINEMAN: I think that was Al Sharpton.

MATTHEWS: Was it really?

TUMULTY: And somebody didn‘t give them memo that this was not black tie. So…

MATTHEWS: Maybe that‘s the suit he has got clean this week.

(LAUGHTER)

[…]

TUMULTY: Yes, not Kerry. He is having more fun now.

MATTHEWS: What about Gore and Clinton? That‘s a recent injury to

both. I mean, Gore jumps into the campaign forthere we go. Watch

this. We‘re watching this right now. There‘s Gore

(CROSSTALK)

FINEMAN: See, now, that was very carefully choreographed.

MATTHEWS: That was the quickest one.

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: How fast did Gore get past Clinton there?

TUMULTY: I didn‘t see any eye contact there.

MATTHEWS: How fast?

(LAUGHTER)

MATTHEWS: He is about to give him a high-five.

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: No response to that high-five.

FINEMAN: You know, what the thought balloons are there is, Gore is thinking, if it hadn‘t been for that guy, I would have won this election. And Clinton with a thought balloon is thinking, you dummy. How could you have blown that election that I set up for you?

MATTHEWS: Oh, God, and this sort of practiced hand clapping. Most people don‘t clap like that. They clap like this.

FINEMAN: That‘s the Democratic clap. Don‘t you agree, Karen?

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: … an official clap.

(CROSSTALK)

FINEMAN: Democrats stand up on the stage and clap.

MATTHEWS: It is official clapping.

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: And then they really want to go like this up on top of their heads when they‘re really enthusiastic.

TUMULTY: Well, you remember, though, when Al Gore was running, somebody actually had to coach him on clapping.

MATTHEWS: Really?

TUMULTY: That is a true story. Yes.

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: How was he doing it wrong?

FINEMAN: Like Herman Munster. It was…

MATTHEWS: I don‘t think he was doing the back beat handshake, do you?

I think he was probably doing the front beat.

Gag me with a weapon of mass destruction.

Lowering The Veil

Via Reuters:

Political consultants and analysts said Clarke’s allegation that Bush ignored the al Qaeda threat before the Sept. 11 attacks and was obsessed by a desire to invade Iraq were especially damaging because they confirmed other previous revelations from policy insiders.

“Each of these revelations adds to the others so that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts and the message gets reinforced with voters,” said Richard Rosecrance, a political scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles.

[…]

“The administration can huff and puff but if there are enough bricks in the structure, they can’t blow the house down any more,” said American University historian Allan Lichtman.

“Right now, you have quite a number of bricks. It’s not just scaffolding any more,” he said.

[…]

“Bush has chosen national security and his response to the terrorist attack as a cornerstone of his campaign and now comes this guy Clarke, their guy, who says that the administration was intentionally or unintentionally not paying enough attention to the terrorist threat,” said Rick Davis, a Republican political consultant.

[…]

“If people start to doubt that claim and if the message from Clarke and O’Neill and others begins to stick, it would seriously weaken Bush on his strongest point,” said Fordham University political scientist Tom DeLuca.

The administration response has usually been to try to destroy the reputations of its critics. It suggested O’Neill had illegally used classified documents and said he was motivated by sour grapes after having been forced to resign from the Cabinet. A Treasury probe has cleared him of misusing documents.

Similarly, White House aides said Clarke was bitter about having been denied a promotion and “out of the loop” in the administration. They also said he was a closet Democrat working as a proxy for Bush’s presidential opponent, John Kerry.

“This administration has shown a tremendous ability to demonize its opponents. But at some point, people start to ask themselves, could all these people be pathological liars? At some point, they can’t all be liars,” said Democratic consultant Michael Goldman.

Billmon thinks:

Now that Against All Enemies has gone into its fifth printing, and the 9/11 commission hearings have generated a huge amount of press coverage — and, judging from the anecdotal evidence, a fair amount of kitchen table and coffee break conversation as well — it looks like the events of the past week may be evolving into something much more significant than just another political mud fight.

I agree that with Clarke’s charges, aside from the fact that they were very effectively delivered by a very credible source, the central complaint about the Bush administration is finally reaching critical mass. There was the outing of Valerie Plame, the phony Jessica Lynch story, the AWOL charges, Paul O’Neill’s book, Halliburton corruption, the strong arming of the Richard Foster and much more, all layering upon the other until it’s impossible to ignore the idea that there might be something to all this. And, of course, there is the humongous elephant in the middle of the room — the failure to find weapons of mass destruction. That alone is such an enormous, jarring failure, especially in light of the unspeakably arrogant way in which they told the rest of the world to shove it, that all these other things can no longer be shoved aside.

The air of desperation in the furious character assassination of Clarke actually plays into that concept. They are rattled and it shows.

In the piece linked above, Billmon comments on the rather strange (and unprecedented) national sense of denial after 9/11, which I think is an important element of the George W. Bush mystique:

One of the things I found most remarkable about 9/11 — at least when compared to past national traumas like the Kennedy assassination or Pearl Harbor — was how willing the American public was to put questions of responsibility and accountability out of mind, seemingly indefinitely.

I think the reason for this is that subconsciously most people did not really believe that George W. Bush was capable of leading the country through a serious national security crisis. In order to keep from panicking, they simply went into denial. It’s a natural reaction in a situation over which you have very little control.

There was nothing particularly inspiring about Bush standing on the rubble saying “The people who knocked down these buildings are going to hear all of us soon.” (It was hardly “we have nothing to fear but fear itself.”) People just knew that they had no choice but to put their faith in this shallow fellow and so they did.

Deep down, everyone has always feared that this inarticulate son of a failed president was not up to the job. It’s been the undercurrent of his entire life. One of his strongest selling points was that he would bring “the grown-ups” back into government. Nobody ever thought he was one of them. He himself said on Oprah in the 2000 campaign that “the public’s biggest misconception of him is that ‘I’m running on my daddy’s name.'”

But a politician can’t be tarred with something that isn’t believable. One of the reasons that most of the public didn’t give a damn about corruption charges against Clinton was that he had no money. It never made sense that a smart guy like him would have been corrupt without getting rich. Yet, most believed immediately that he’d strayed with Monica. They simply didn’t find such a personal matter relevant to his job as president.

Bush’s appearance on Meet The Press a few weeks ago was a disaster. His public statements are increasingly annoying in their stale and repetitive rhetoric. Loyal civil servants are coming forward and complaining about the errors, lies and thuggish tactics that the Bush administrtation is perpetrating. Nothing seems to be working.

And, deep down, the American people are not surprised. With more than three years to go and a national security crisis on their hands they closed their eyes and held on for dear life, hoping against hope that he would rise to the occasion. He didn’t, despite all the phony media hooplah that insisted he was Churchill in ermine and epaulets. We are now only eight months away from our first chance to replace him with someone more capable. People are starting to let go of their desperate need to believe.

The veil is being lowered because it finally feels safe to do so.

He Was Right

Mark Kleiman says:

In a world dominated by uncertainty, having made a correct prediction is no proof of having had the right underlying model. Maybe the guy who was right when almost everyone else was wrong just drew to an inside straight. And of course every bureaucrat thinks his political masters would have been well-advised to take his expertise more seriously than they did.

Still, the past performance sheet has to count for something. Someone who got something important right when most other people didn’t deserves to be listened to. And those who didn’t listen to him before he was proven right by events can legitimately be asked whether their refusal to do so was a mistake.

Every single person who is called upon to defend Richard Clarke should just say, “He was right, wasn’t he?”

It’s really that simple. He said it was going to happen, nobody believed him and it happened. He’s not the one with a credibility problem.

Random Observations

Bill Clinton was great at the Democratic Unity dinner. He was smart, funny, self-deprecating and even a bit inspiring.

His words about Kerry, in which he wove the story of Kerry’s life as a series of missions for which he volunteered was just excellent. When the going gets tough, John Kerry says, “send me.” From Kerry’s Vietnam heroism (which Clinton deftly framed in contrast to the current president, the current vice president and himself) to his fight for kids on the streets, he praised him for volunteering for the tough assignment. And then he asked that the members of the Party go to John Kerry and say, “send me.” It was perfect for the zeitgeist of the moment.

I was struck by the music that was used for these guys, too. Clinton’s upbeat, optimistic “Don’t Stop Thinkin’ About Tomorrow” has been replaced by Kerry’s “I Won’t Back Down” by Tom Petty. This election is all about balls.

Also…

I am really kind of stunned that Bush is making jokes about not being able to find the WMD. That the entire press corps laughed like a bunch of would be sorority girls during pledge week doesn’t surprise me.

On the other hand, if the patriotic correctness police have been dismissed then fine with me. Up until recently you couldn’t ask for a glass of water in a restaurant without prefacing it with “I support the troops.” “The War” was sacred. Even here in Soviet Monica people were flying flags right along side their “War Is Not The Answer” bumper sticker. If the Republicans are abandoning their position as the steely eyed and serious national security grown-ups, I’m all for it.

We’ve got a few guys who are more than ready to step in and fix this goddamned mess.

And Don’t Forget T-Ball

Politus has a great post up about Bush’s urgent priorities before September 11th.

Yeah, he was focused on terrorism all right.

Before the events of September 11, 2001, Bush had signed 24 executive orders. How many of them dealt with counterterrorism?

In his first month in office Bush threw a bone to the Jerry Falwells and Pat Robertsons by setting up the vehicle to give them boatloads of taxpayer money. No time for counterterrorism in January:

Jan 29. Establish Office of Faith Based Initiatives (Remember that?)

Jan 29. Require federal agencies to establish their own Centers for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives

February was whack-a-union month. No time for counterterrism in February either, unless you consider union members to be terrorists. Bush and the Low-Wage Republicans may think union members are terrorists, but the focus was on bin Laden, right?

Feb 12. Extend life of President’s Information Technology Committee

Feb 21. Dissolves Labor-Management Partnerships

Feb 21. Dissolves a labor-friendly executive order, allowing new contractors to fire everybody and hire scabs

Feb 21. Requires contractors to display anti-union messages

Feb 21. Encourage the use of non-union contractors

Bush couldn’t be bothered with any stinkin’ counterterrorism executive orders in March, either. The unions were causing trouble for his boys at American Airlines and something had to be done:

Mar 9. Establish an “Emergency Board” to interfere in the Mechanics Union strike against American Airlines

Likewise for April. The pesky bin Laden guy could wait ‘til next month. There was more union busting to do, and Hispanic voters needed to know that Bush was really worried about the Status of Puerto Rico:

Apr 4. Perfunctory termination of export controls

Apr 5. Slight change in pay for government employees working abroad

Apr 6. Exempt certain contractors from some requirements to hire union workers

Apr 30. Extend the President’s Task Force on the Status of Puerto Rico

Now we are up to May, when the terrorist chatter picked up by intelligence was spiking. Clarke and Tenet knew something was coming, and Clark was nearly apoplectic in his warnings. So, did Bush finally focus his administration on bin Laden, signing an executive order to that effect? No… May is the month for Social Security Privatization and phat payback to his oily buddies:

May 2. Create President’s Commission to Strengthen Social Security, the first step toward privatization

May 18. Actions to Expedite Energy-Related Projects, fast track for environmental rapers and scrapers

May 18. Ditto, for Big Energy supply and distribution

May 23. Prohibit import of rough diamonds from Liberia

May 28. President’s Task Force to Improve Health Care Delivery for Our Nation’s Veterans, a sham committee to look for ways to improve the VA

Terrorist chatter from intelligence intercepts was at a crescendo in June of 2001, yet Bush was focused on the “compassionate” part of his resume, after spending the last few months working on the “conservative” part. But not a peep about UBL or terrorism:

Jun 1. Very slight changes to the President’s Information Technology Advisory Committee

Jun 6. Extend by 2 years initiatives to Increase Participation of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in Federal Programs

Jun 19. Community-based Alternatives for Individuals with Disabilities

Jun 20. 21st Century Workforce Initiative; as if the Clinton boom was going to last forever

In July Bush was getting ready for his month-long vacation in Crawfish, and mumbling about “vampire” cellular phone power supplies. Wasn’t Usama bin Laden at least as important to his administration as trade with Belarus?

Jul 2. Waiving anti-communist trade restrictions against Belarus

Jul 31. Requiring government agencies to purchase energy efficient power supplies for things like cellular phones

August in Crawfish is too frikkin’ hot to think about terrorists:

Aug 17. Perfunctory extension of the cold war-era Export Control Act

This was the last executive order Bush signed before 9/11. Even though he and his lackeys now claim they were consumed with UBL and counterterrorism was a top priority to them, there is not a peep of any of that in any of the documents Bush signed to set the direction and functioning of his government. And then?

September 11.

At which point he decided to invade a country that had nothing to do with terrorism, destroy half a century of alliances and alienate the entire world.

Shaking The Trees

Fred Kaplan writes another fine article in Slate today about Richard Clarke. He again notes Clarke’s legendary reputation as a brilliant bureaucratic infighter as he did in his first piece on the subject a couple of days ago. This skill is mentioned frequently by those in Washington who know Clarke.

Clarke demonstrated his insight into the process with this statement on Larry King Live last night:

CLARKE: Well, we’ll never know. But let me compare 9/11 and the period immediately before it to the millennium rollover and the period immediately before that. In December, 1999, we received intelligence reports that there were going to be major al Qaeda attacks. President Clinton asked his national security adviser Sandy Berger to hold daily meetings with the attorney general, the FBI director, the CIA director and stop the attacks. And every day they went back from the White House to the FBI, to the Justice Department, to the CIA and they shook the trees to find out if there was any information. You know, when you know the United States is going to be attacked, the top people in the United States government ought to be working hands-on to prevent it and working together.

Now, contrast that with what happened in the summer of 2001, when we even had more clear indications that there was going to be an attack. Did the president ask for daily meetings of his team to try to stop the attack? Did Condi Rice hold meetings of her counterparts to try to stop the attack? No.

And if she had, if the FBI director and the attorney general had gone back day after day to their department to the White House, what would they have shaken loose? We now know from testimony before the Commission that buried in the FBI was the fact that two of the hijackers had entered the United States. Now, if that information had been able to be shaken loose by the FBI director and the attorney general in response to daily meetings with the White House, if we had known that those two — if the attorney general had known, if the FBI director had known, that those two were in the United States, Larry, I believe we could have caught those two. Would that have stopped…

Michael Isikoff added this on the subject later in the show:

I do want to say, though, on the question of — I was struck — the most fascinating thing that Clarke said, to me, during the hearings today was he laid out a scenario by which — actually, a plausible one, by which September 11 could have been prevented if there had been the kind of urgency to the issue that he thought it could be. And that was, we did know. The government did know. The CIA knew and the FBI late in August knew that two of the hijackers — Nawaf al Hazmi (ph), Khalid al Midar (ph) — were inside the United States. Two suspected al Qaeda operatives were inside the country. Yet there was no concerted government attempt to find these guys. There was a late bulletin from the FBI.

What Clarke suggested he would have done — he says he would like to think he would have done, had he known about this, was an all-out public manhunt. Put these guys’ pictures all over the place, “America’s Most Wanted,” have their pictures in the paper. And had that been done, which does sound like a plausible thing that could have been done, it might at least have deterred those two guys…

KING: Yes.

ISIKOFF: … from getting on the planes, and it might well have disrupted the plot. It’s the first time I’ve heard a plausible scenario by which the government could have taken the little information it did have and actually stopped the plot.

KING: Putting their pictures where everybody gets on board an airplane.

I think that this is a very interesting insight. Clarke, a 30 year veteran of the government and one who has a fierce reputation for cutting through the bureaucracy to get things done, says that the way to deal with an urgent national security threat is to force the issue to the top of the agenda by having the president personally lean on the cabinet heads to “shake the trees” in their own bureaucracies. That makes sense to me. When people are called to account by the boss on a certain issue they turn up the heat on their underlings. It’s human nature and its certainly been my experience in the workplace.

And, he says that if that had been done in the spring and summer of 2001, when by all accounts there was a lot of intelligence that something “big” was about to happen, it’s entirely possible that some of the “dots” would have been connected before they blew up the world trade center and the pentagon.

Clarke himself says that we will never know if we could have uncovered or disrupted the plot, but certainly it is clear that the system he describes in the Clinton administration was successful previously in disrupting the millenium bombing plot. That should count for something.

But, the bigger issue, I think, is that this illustrates once again what a grave mistake it is to have a president who is arrogant yet intellectually incurious and whose inexperience in life and government makes him manipulable by others. Clarke had previously worked for Reagan who was surrounded by highly professional foreign policy realists and Bush Sr who was a highly professional foreign policy realist himself. With Clinton he found a nimble, intelligent thinker who was open to new ideas and methods for dealing with post cold war threats and who was accessible and personally engaged in the decision making process.

But, George W. Bush was an inexperienced and overly protected executive with little personal depth and too much faith in a cabal of neocon radicals. He relied on an intellectually weak staff whose main job was to create unnecessary layers of bureaucracy to protect their boss from difficult problems. These layers of bureaucracy insulated him from the important issues of the day and made it impossible even for a brilliant bureaucrat like Clarke to cut through the maze and convince the ossified Iraq obsessives to look up from their dusty PNAC wish-lists and deal with the terrible threat we faced right that very minute.

The failure stemmed directly from the president because he is not in charge. No organization works under that kind of leadership much less a sophisticated bureaucracy. The system completely broke down under the effect of no real leadership, competing agendas and focus in the wrong direction.

The Bush administration’s image of competence and cool collected professionalism is completely phony. From DiUllio to O’Neill to Clarke we see first hand that this is a highly dysfunctional White House, one that spends much more time on politics than policy and that is philosophically incoherent and at constant war with itself. It has been reduced to issuing thuggish threats of reprisal to any civil servant who insists upon doing his job. The president is hardly more than a public relations flack, his national security advisor is a cipher, his various cabinet departments are wholly owned subsidiaries of special interests, he’s been completely manipulated by a radical Vice President and a slightly insane Secretary of Defense and his economic policy has been entirely directed toward short term political ends. And yet, amazingly, in virtually every single action it has taken, his administration has failed spectacularly.

In light of this we really need to let go of this “well, these things happen,” attitude and recognize that we have been duped into thinking that 9/11 could not have been prevented. Clearly, it could have. Other plots were thwarted and they were thwarted because the government focused attention on it and directed its resources toward that end.

It is true that the bigger question of how badly Bush dealt with the issue of terrorism AFTER 9/11 is probably a more potent campaign issue, because the results of going into Iraq are still fresh and easily observable. But, after listening to Dick Clarke for the last few days and beginning to read through is book, I am convinced that Bush dropped the ball.

But then, it was entirely predictable that he would drop the ball because he was never qualified to be president and that lack of qualification led him to make very poor choices in advisors and very poor judgements about the nation’s priorities.

The bigger lesson in all of this, and one which I’m sure will go inheeded by many, is that you should not elect stupid people to the presidency. Smart ones can screw up, but it’s not guaranteed that they will. But, a stupid yet arrogant president is bound to fail. The job is just too complicated for someone like that.

Update: Brad DeLong and Matt Yglesias discuss the related topic of Condi Rice’s obvious lack of proper qualifications for the job of NSA under the current circumstances.